Fear of Fog, Freezes Minds and Fosters
Indecision
in the Face of the Fog of War
Indecision, hesitation,
and disagreement at command and staff levels ar endemic and if allowed to run
unchecked leaves the battle to the bold.
The Fog of War is the default status of information of who is doing what,
where, when and with what. That includes all involved, regardless of whom. Grant and Sherman at Vicksburg, and Lee and
Jackson at Chancellorsville demonstrated that rare ability described in French
as coup d'oeil, the ability to see at a
glance the big picture under all the fog, smoke, and fire of battle. All had the knack of a grasp of the whole
when many of the parts were missing and some were wrong. Of those four
commanders, only one (Robert E Lee) would have been selected for higher command
or the War College
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| Union Plan to flank Lee and march to Richmond A |
Grant and Sherman were
old and close friends with Grant helping Sherman recover from deep depression
and despair. Both had left the Army before the war and both had
experienced failure as civilians.
Jackson was mediocre as an instructor at VMI, and not the career centric
courtier that thrive with the Golden Cockroaches that infest the walls of
power. Lee was also rare, particularly
today, as the perfect example of the Tidewater aristocracy that included George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
It requires a deep understanding
of the relationship between what the Soviets called the Correlation of Forces
(COF), which is a broader concept than balance of power. It includes
understanding the quirks of dirt, fire and maneuver and impact of the fog of
war on the minds of opposing players. The impact of the fog of war is an understanding
of how a leader or manager deals with fog (missing, lost, false, and errant
pieces of information. The fog of war is
also found in any decision making body absent the firepower.
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| Lee splits his army to hold his right and a punch to the nose with his left |
The principal problem of
some in positions of power is that some can't make a decision until all the
pieces are accounted for, confirmed, and lead to certainty. One British
writer, Norman Dixon wrote "On the Psychology of Military
Incompetence" about forty years ago, and promptly forgotten and dismissed
... until now when copies of his book is expensive. His thesis asserts
that Assholes (closest clinical term) lose battles. More
specifically, the Anal Retentive whose sense of security is secured by no shit,
no messes, no confusion, orderly, clean and in accordance with
regulations.
Uncertainty in combat
intelligence and operational information triggers a rigid hesitation to make
decisions absent extra and comforting information that fits the templates. The
correlation of shit to shot requires balls, the balls to shoot without all the
shit being cleaned up.
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| Lee hits Hooker with a wide left hook, while staring a force three times his size in the face |
While the Anal Retentive
are hesitant in uncertainty, they can be otherwise fearless, inventive,
creative and inspiring leaders. Hooker, Burnside, Fremont, and others
were fearless in the face of certainty. Grant and Sherman having lived in
uncertainty and survived, knew that of ten courses of action one end certain
victory and the other certain defeat, taking the first one in the middle that
comes to mind and go balls to the wall wins.
Some students of the
military art and the role that Assholes play in it are coming around to see the
correlation in the US military between an obsession over appearance and
hesitation to act, and an ever expanding need for visions of certainty: more
troops, more supplies, more intelligence, anything that provides a
camouflaged pacifier. In Afghanistan, after SOF had run the Taliban
out of town, some flag rank got furious over SOF troops wearing
beards, an essential status symbol in Afghanistan.
.
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Patton is an example of
one who knew which shit was important and demanded a high standard of
appearance and high risk when the odds favored action. It stems, so Dr Dixon
says, from excessive excitement over a child's toilet training, which in the
British military he traces back to excessive shit over shit in the English
boarding school system. That the diagnosis fits many cultures, the
trace back to potty training doesn't hold where in both Japanese and German
child raising lets the rug rats run loose, but the leash is tightened by peer
pressure later.
Maps by Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com
